Thirty years ago I hosted a baby shower for a friend who was in medical school. All the other guests were classmates of hers. When we played a “guess the gender of the baby” game, I was shocked to discover that none of her friends thought the baby would be a “boy” or a “girl.” Instead, they all guessed it would be either “male” or “female.” As future doctors, this was evidently the terminology they were accustomed to using!
Do you and your customers use the same terminology?
I was recently reminded of this incident while working on new website text for Milestone Risk Management, insurance experts dedicated to managing the risks of middle-market companies. In the “services” section of the site they had planned to have a page called “Property & Casualty.” I asked, “what exactly is ‘property and casualty’”? I had a general idea, but I was not 100% sure what this terminology meant.
As it turns out, the “property & casualty” policies that Milestone sells are what their average customer probably thinks of as “business insurance.” I therefore changed the name of this page to “Business Insurance,” to match the terminology that the customers use, because that’s what is important.
You need to get your own point of view out of the picture
I often preach that when it comes to how you communicate about your business’ offerings, you need to do your best to get yourself out of the picture and make your words all about your prospective customers and their needs. At one level, this means greatly reducing or eliminating the use of we, us, I, our and my, and rewording things to focus on marketing’s two “magic words” – you and your – instead.
For example, change
“We make sure we create a personal relationship with all of our clients”
To
“Having a personal relationship with your insurance broker can be a significant benefit for you.”
At another level, getting yourself out of the picture also means ensuring that your terminology is not a turn-off. A good way to do this is to eliminate the jargon used by industry insiders that your customers might not use, even if they know what those terms mean. Instead, reword things from their perspective, using the words that they are most likely to use when shopping for whatever it is that you sell.